


In the Garden

by Gabihime



Series: A Lovesong of Rooks [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angels, F/M, Private School, Reincarnation, Teacher/Student
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-10 18:43:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3299837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabihime/pseuds/Gabihime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of very dubious girl who has an altogether illegal relationship with her laconic, wine-drinking geology professor, who was at one point a fallen angel, and then the pope.  What can I tell you?  This is the sort of story that I write when left to my own devices.  Written circa 2005/2006.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Garden

When she lay on the rug in front of the fire, legs kicked into the air and crossed at her ankles, or even idly counting time as she swung them back and forth, it was like a vision of things that had been, things that were, and things that would be all at once, as if she were all three of Ebenezer's midnight visitations at once, and of course, comelier by far. She was always very fair, Eve, Gabriel, despite her time in the garden when the sun kissed her an uneven strawberry tan crisscrossed by the snow white lines over her small round shoulders where the straps of her sunsuit had lain over milk-smooth flesh. She was not strawberry bronze now, owing to the fact that it was midwinter, hence the fire, and also the time of year where she was bound to be bound up in sweaters and long slacks, or tights at least, jumpers, knee dresses, all quilty plaid and trimmed in fur, a-line coat abounding like a little Kennedy girl -- all of this was her as  _usual_  wintertime self. In his company? Well, obviously the field was different.  
  
So now she lay on her belly before the fire, bare skin welcomed by the plush of what had been mink or fox or perhaps bear. The first time she had been in this room she had asked him if he had killed it himself, a dance in her voice that he had then been unable to place the structure of. He had said no, of course not, it had been inherited, like many of his older things that harkened back to an age of Imperialism, from some long dead Uncle. That is appropriate, she had said, digging her bare toes into the curl of the rug, because most of our dearest treasures are inheritance from times past.  
  
On her back droplets of water from her still wet-damp hair stood out like diamonds on the gentle contour, nature's fractal, random distribution, while more carefully placed droplets of wine stood out like rubies that caught the firelight and she was perfectly still as he let another drop purposefully from his index finger. The diamonds on her flesh would be shed like rain when she got up, streaking snail patterns of glitter when she rose, but the wine would slip off more slowly, leaving kisses of blood bloomed bud on her skin like the freckles she never got in summer. She was patient with this, as she was always patient, legs kicking again idly once the drop had settled as she turned another page in her book and read aloud. Donne of course. Trust Gabriel to hang on Donne like a little girl from a wishing tree. Eve. Come into the garden.  
  
"Twice or thrice had I loved thee,  
before I knew thy face or name;  
so in a voice,  
so in a shapeless flame,  
Angells affect us oft, and worship'd bee; still when,  
to where thou wert, I came,  
some lovely glorious  _nothing_  I did see.  
But since my soule,  
whose child love is, takes limmes of flesh,  
and else could nothing doe, more subtile than the parent is, love must not be,  
but take a body too,  
and therefore what thou wert, and who, I bid Love aske,  
and now that it assume  
thy body, I allow,  
and fixe it self  
in thy lip, eye, and brow."  
  
She cocked her head and the pile of dark hair held as-you-like on her head with too few pins shifted a bit and he was reminded not of the plain brown pins she bound her hair up with now, but of golden hairpins tipped in jade that she'd buried in her spilling hair at his gift one year at Christmas. Yule. Gold and green. It had been before Christ's year. And then there had been diamond pins studding her hair like stars in the sky, or like crystals in a naked seam of basalt, and she had always been without one shoe, because he had collected them. Now perhaps it was ribbons as then it had been ribbons. Chaste, as few things between them were for very long at all.  _Kingfisher, you do not wear my colors_. But he did.  
  
"Don't you think it's terribly sad?" she asked, propping her chin up on one slender hand, still inkstained from writing her Latin lines out in triplicate -- as he would still not bend the law from her when she frolicked outside its bounds and was caught, either by his own net or the pull-line cast by someone else.  
  
"That our institution does not embrace the guiding hand of corporal punishment? Yes. Perhaps for once you might be able to correctly tell me that the Stennian came before the Tonian."  
  
She looked somewhat confused, then her eyes fell to the ink stains between her fingers and she rolled her eyes, crisp and everblue as linarite, "Well, I didn't have the pleasure of being an eye-witness to those eras, Methuselah. But no, that is not what I found terribly sad, although I am sure you are beside yourself without being able to paddle me, i.e. corporal punishment. I was being very serious, dragon, but if you have no desire to know the actuality then I shall be perfectly happy to keep it to myself."  
  
Doe eyes. Slate. Serpentine Everblue as linarite. Lazulite. Lazarite. Lazarus. One who comes again after death.  
  
"Speak," he said simply, "I am listening."  
  
She shook her head slightly, bemused, and a trail of that dark chestnut fell over her shoulder and slipped down her back, where the delicate bundles of feathers were, like white sparrow wings, when she was herself as  _the other. Evelyn_  at this moment. Come into my garden.  
  
She folded her arms in front of her and settled her chin upon them pensively, "So many people, when they go out looking for the one that they love, cast such a narrow, tiny net that I do not know how it is that any two people truly in love ever find each other."  
  
"I think," he said philosophically, like he rarely was lest he take the brunt of teasing from one Douglas S. Vann, Professor Emeritus of Metaphysics, Damn-him-crossways, "That you will find that it is rare that they find each other and that most marriage is not predicated on what you might term 'true love.'"  
  
"I think marriage is largely outdated," she sighed heroically and seemed to be debating whether to roll on her back and spoil the crystal formation along her spine into a beautiful mess of color and slickness.  
  
"I think you are fourteen and will likely change your mind," he said, one eyebrow raised.  
  
"Marriage is," she said definitively, rocking her hips sideways so the diamonds and rubies spilled from her back at the expense of seeing her navel, "At the moment doing very little for me."  
  
"That legality is out of my hands. If allowable -- "  
  
"If we were still in Anagni then I could be your child-wife. Then it was very usual to marry at fourteen, only perhaps then it was not a matter of eleven years," she laughed soft and sweet as the honey she demanded in her heavily milk-tasting coffee, "As I don't believe it was common practice for popes to marry."  
  
"You are problematic," he said, and meant it.  
  
"I am myself, and in being so, I am your problem," she said, and it was true.  
  
"Always," he said, and it was golden hairpins and sparrow wings and a bell for the cat who wore little plaid kilts.  
  
"Always," she answered prettily, call and response, and pushed her Latin aside, for there was much to be done and very little when one refused to leave things to the grace of time.  
  
*


End file.
